Cookie Policy
Effective Date: May 19, 2026 Last Updated: May 29, 2026
About this policy
This page lists every cookie and similar storage item that programintegrity.org sets on your device. Cookies are small files a website asks your browser to keep so the site can recognise you, hold your preferences, or measure how visitors use it.
For everything else — what personal information we collect, how long we keep it, who we share it with, and how to exercise your rights — see our Privacy Policy.
The cookies we use
Strictly necessary
These cookies are required for the site to work. They can't be turned off because the site stops functioning without them. We don't use them for analytics or marketing.
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authentication cookie | programintegrity.org | Keeps you signed in across pages. HttpOnly, Secure. |
Session or 7 days |
pia_preferred_provider (localStorage) |
programintegrity.org | Remembers which login provider you used last time. | Until you sign out or clear browser data |
| Chat session storage | programintegrity.org | Holds your current GovQuery chat thread for the lifetime of this browser tab. | Per tab |
cc_cookie |
programintegrity.org | Records your cookie-banner choice so we don't re-prompt on every page. | 6 months |
Analytics
These help us understand which pages, searches, and tools are useful, and where the site frustrates visitors. We use them for product improvement, not advertising.
| Name | Provider | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
pia_session_id (localStorage) |
programintegrity.org | Anonymous per-browser identifier so our visitor counts don't double-count repeat visits from the same device. | 1 year |
_clck |
clarity.ms | Microsoft Clarity user identifier. | 1 year |
_clsk |
clarity.ms | Microsoft Clarity session identifier. | 24 hours |
CLID |
clarity.ms | Microsoft Clarity feature flags. | 1 year |
ANONCHK, MR, MUID, SM |
c.bing.com | Microsoft anonymous identifiers used by Clarity. Set by Microsoft on a c.bing.com domain, not by us. |
Up to 1 year |
_ga |
google-analytics.com | Google Analytics 4 anonymous client identifier so usage counts don't double-count repeat visits. | 2 years |
_ga_<stream> |
google-analytics.com | Google Analytics 4 session/state for this site's data stream. | 2 years |
_gid |
google-analytics.com | Google Analytics 4 short-lived visitor identifier. | 24 hours |
_gat |
google-analytics.com | Google Analytics 4 request throttling. | 1 minute |
Beyond cookies: server-side data we capture
Some data we collect doesn't live in a cookie or on your device — it lives on our servers. We list it here so you have the full picture of what running the site costs in personal information. The Privacy Policy covers retention, your rights, and how to request deletion.
| What we capture | When | Where it goes | Opt-out behaviour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Server-side activity log — the search you ran, the AI Mode message you sent, page navigation, clicks, the results we returned, and the AI's response | Only with your analytics consent | Our own database (user_activity table) |
Opt out and we stop writing rows immediately — the server refuses the write even if your browser tries to send it |
| Microsoft Clarity — clicks, scrolls, session replays | Only with your analytics consent | Microsoft (Clarity's privacy is governed by Microsoft's privacy statement) | Opt out and the Clarity script never loads; its cookies on your device are deleted |
| Google Analytics 4 — pageviews, navigation, and GovQuery site-search events (query, filters, mode) | Only with your analytics consent | Google (Google Privacy Policy); also exported to a Google BigQuery dataset in our own Google Cloud project | Opt out and the Google Analytics script never loads; its cookies on your device are deleted |
| LangChain LangSmith — engineering trace of an AI Mode run (your message, model output, tool calls) | Only with your analytics consent | LangChain Inc. (data processor) | Opt out and the trace is suppressed at our server before it leaves our infrastructure |
| AI model providers — your AI Mode message + a short context window | Whenever you use AI Mode or AI Overview | Anthropic (Claude) and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry (OpenAI models) — both contracted as data processors; neither trains its public models on your input | This is necessary processing to generate the response. If you don't want your message sent, don't use AI Mode or AI Overview |
Third parties
The third parties that receive data via the cookies above are Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics 4 (with that data also exported to Google BigQuery in our own Google Cloud project), both described in the tables above and both consent-gated. We do not run advertising, use targeted-advertising cookies, enable Google advertising features or Google Signals, or share data with ad networks or data brokers.
How to manage your choices
The Cookie preferences link in the page footer lets you change your cookie settings at any time. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser — aboutcookies.org has step-by-step instructions for every common browser. If you block strictly-necessary cookies the site will not work.
We respect the Global Privacy Control browser signal (Sec-GPC: 1) as an opt-out of any sharing of personal information.
Changes to this policy
When we add or remove a cookie, or change retention, we update this page and the cookie-banner version. Existing visitors will see the banner again so the next choice is recorded against the updated policy.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or requests to exercise the rights described in our Privacy Policy, go to privacy@programintegrity.org.